Vindication Swim

Elliott Hasler’s account of Mercedes Gleitze, the first British woman to swim the English Channel, is undermined by less-than-stellar acting.

It would not be difficult to write an article about Elliott Hasler's Vindication Swim which gave the impression that it contained admirable material handled in circumstances which allowed one to see it as a great achievement. However, I write as a critic and my own view of the film is a good deal less positive than might have been the case. That being so, what I have to say could be regarded as the equivalent of raining on Elliott Hasler’s parade. Even so, to have done what he has done before reaching his mid-twenties is remarkable and evidence does exist that many viewers have found substantially more to please them in this film than I did.

Let us start, therefore, with facts that would have been included in any article promoting the work. It is not by chance that the chosen date for the UK release of Vindication Swim is 8th March. That is International Women's Day and the ideal time to present a film that celebrates Mercedes Gleitze who was the first British woman to swim the English Channel. That she had virtually become a forgotten figure when she died in 1981 makes it all the more appropriate to tell her story and especially so in an age when the achievements of women sidelined by history are coming under the spotlight (the recent documentary film Fanny: The Other Mendelssohn was a fine example of how to do that).

Gleitze was born in Brighton in 1900 and it was one hundred years later that the birth of this film’s writer/ director took place in the same city. Elliott Hasler had no formal study in filmmaking but while at school he made a feature film, WW11: The Long Road Home, over a period of three years. Wikipedia tells us that when it was shown the film critic Graham Fuller declared that Hasler was “maybe the next Spielberg". Based on the experiences of Hasler's great-grandfather, it was shown in 2017 at fringe festivals in Brighton and Edinburgh. Vindication Swim takes Hasler much further since, although again three years in the making and completed in 2022 despite only now being released, this counts as his first professional feature and it has already been shown widely at film festivals. Among its successes it received the October 2023 monthly award as Best Feature Film in the New York International Film Awards and had a comparable win at the Athens International Monthly Art Film Festival.

Given that background one has to credit Hasler’s determination and ambition and, indeed, Vindication Swim shot in wide screen and successfully evoking 1927 – that being the year in which to set – begins well. There’s a sense of assurance in the pre-credit sequence which is well assembled (there seems to be no credit for the editing but on his schoolboy venture Hasler was both photographer and editor and I rather imagine that he fills both functions here as well). But, despite the good start and sympathetic subject-matter which gives the film its popular appeal, it soon becomes clear that the film is working less well than one would have hoped.

For all their differences it seems natural to compare Vindication Swim with that recent film drama about a long-distance swimmer, Nyad. Both films involve a swimmer on a major undertaking who finds herself obliged to make more than one attempt at it and when it comes to making a full-length feature it is difficult for a director to sustain interest in drawn-out and somewhat repetitive scenes of the heroine swimming. In this respect it should be acknowledged that Hasler has the edge over Nyad by opting for a running length of only 98 minutes rather than 121. He is more adroit too in telling Gleitze’s story in a way that references earlier attempts at a cross-channel swim without showing them thus reserving visualising her endeavours until we reach the two key swims in the autumn of 1927. This being a period piece, the background story can give a sense of the times by showing how Gleitze when working as a typist was subjected to unwanted advances by her boss and as a woman found it difficult to get support from swimming associations.

But, if these aspects work for the film, in other respects Nyad readily shows up the weaknesses of Vindication Swim. Hasler has been able to draw on the services of James Wilby and Douglas Hodge but Wilby has only a single scene and Hodge merely speaks the words of a newsreader when news clips are shown. The main players here are substantially less experienced and it shows. As Mercedes Gleitze, Kirsten Callaghan was brave enough to undertake the crucial swimming scenes herself without a body double and does put across something of both the swimmer’s naivety and her determination. Furthermore, Victoria Sumner is not ill-suited to the role of Gleitze’s rival, Edith Gade, who made fraudulent claims about her own channel swim. But neither of them is even close to the same level as Annette Bening and Jodie Foster, the stars of Nyad, and it's just chalk and cheese if you compare the performance here of John Locke as Gleitze’s coach with that of Rhys Ifans in his key supporting role alongside Bening and Foster.  In addition, you only need to remember a film such as that famed period sports drama Chariots of Fire to be aware of the lack of distinction in many of the supporting roles here.

Hasler’s decision to film partly in colour and partly in black-and-white is something to which one adapts but the structure of the storytelling which goes back-and-forth in time on occasion often feels clumsy while to return to the pre-credit footage about two-thirds of the way through suggests that we are nearer to the conclusion of the film than we are. For a real-life story it also seems inappropriate to give Gleitze occasional visions in which we see her late father giving her advice. But, if all these details unfortunately add to one’s doubts, what is even more disconcerting is the uncertainty as to how truthful the film is. The statement at the close relating to that takes a longer form than usual: "Certain names, characters, places and events have been changed or invented for dramatic purposes". Reporting on the film’s March release an article in The Times made it clear that Gleitze’s trainer was one G.H. Allan and not Harold Best as John Locke’s character is named. As for Edith Gade, that's a made-up name too: in real life she was Dorothy Cochrane Logan who used the professional name Mona McLennan. Such changes make one question to what extent this attempt to reinstate awareness of Mercedes Gleitze indulges in fictional elements. Even so, I must acknowledge that for some audiences Vindication Swim will play as an appealing story of one woman's fight for just recognition of what she had achieved when swimming the channel in 1927.

MANSEL STIMPSON

Cast: Kirsten Callaghan, John Locke, Victoria Summer, James Wilby, Justin Hayward, Sam Buller, Matthew Wyn Davies, Mike Skinner, John Tolputt, Anthony Arundell, David Aitchison, and the voice of Douglas Hodge.

Dir Elliott Hasler, Pro Sally Humphreys, Douglas McJannet and Simon Hasler, Screenplay Elliott Hasler, Ph Elliott Hasler, Pro Des David Hasler, Music Daniel Clive McCallum, Costumes Vania Mills, Barbara Roche and Anne Atkins.

Relsah Films/Sea High Productions/Arden Entertainment/Picnik Entertainment-Picnik Entertainment.
98 mins. UK. 2022. UK Rel: 8 March 2024. Cert. PG.